Murder in Black Letter by Poul William Anderson (classic novels to read txt) 📕

it. Moffat drove Kintyre through miles of city, down to that place in Oakland where the dead man was kept.

They entered a chill room. Kintyre took the lead, compulsively. He went to the sheeted thing and uncovered it.

After a while he turned around. "Bruce Lombardi," he said. "Yes."

"I'm sorry you—Oh, hell." Moffat looked away. "He was a sort of handsome young chap, wasn't he? Thin regular features and so on. I'll bet his parents were proud of him."

"They paid his undergraduate expenses," mumbled Kintyre. "Since then he went ahead on scholarships and assistantships, but those were four high-priced years for a poor family."

"And now they'll see this. Hell." Moffat stood with fingers doubled together, talking fast. He himself was rather young, more shaken than his superiors would have wished. "Look at those burns—marks—He's like that all over. He was never unconscious once, unless he passed out now and then—no blackjack marks, no chloroform, just rope bruises. Then when he was dead, the murderers cut off his fingers and hacked his face some more, to make it harder for us to identify. Stuffed him into an old coat and pair of pants and left him half in the tidewater. Twenty-four years of age, did you say? This is what the old Lombardis have to show for their twenty-four years. Jesus Christ. I'll bet I have to take his father in here."

"You think it was a sadist?"

"Oh, sure, I don't doubt at least one of the murderers got his kicks. It takes a cracked brain to do something like this—even for money. Yes, I feel pretty sure it was a professional job. Most of the torture was systematic, almost neat, for a definite purpose. You can see that. When they reached their purpose, when he talked or whatever it was, they cut his throat—neatly—then mutilated him for a good logical reason, to make it harder for us, and disposed of the body in regular gangland style. They shouldn't have dumped him in Berkeley. The Berkeley force sees so many University people we automatically thought a nice-looking young fellow like this might belong on the campus, and checked. But that was their only mistake. Mine was going in for a job where I'll have to show this to his father."

"Must you?"

"It's the law. I wish it weren't."

Moffat moved to pull back the sheet, but Kintyre was there first. Covering Bruce's face made a kind of finality. Though the real closing curtain had fallen hours ago, he thought, when Bruce lifted hands torn, broken, and burned, to take death for his weariness. And afterward they cut his fingers off. Maybe the curtain had not been rung down yet.

2

By the time Kintyre got back, it was close to sunset. He entered a book-lined living room. There were a few good pictures, a small record player, his sabers hung on the wall by Trig, the furniture bought used or made out of old boxes—otherwise little. He did not believe in cluttering life with objects.

He poured himself a stiff drink. Glenlivet was his only expensive luxury. He sat down to savor it and perhaps think a little about Bruce. There was no solid reason why the boy should have made so large a niche in Kintyre's existence, but somehow he had. The emptiness hurt.

When the phone rang, Kintyre was there picking it up before consciousness of the noise registered. He was not surprised to hear Margery Towne's voice.

"Bob? You know?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. I wish to hell I could tell you just how sorry."

"I can guess." Her tone was flattened by the control she must be keeping on it. "We both loved him, didn't we?"

"I think everybody did."

"Somebody didn't, Bob."

"I suppose you heard through the police?"

"They were here a few minutes ago. Do they know everything?"

"Probably I gave them your name. They came to me first, for the identification."

"They were very nice about it and all that, but—"

Silence whistled remotely over the wires.

"Bob, could you come talk to me? Now?"

"Sure, pony. Give me half an hour."

Kintyre hung up one-handed, starting to undress with the other. He went through a shower and put on a suit in ten minutes.

Margery's apartment was catercorner from his, with the University between. He parked his battered '48 De Soto on the near side of the campus and walked across, hoping to hoof out some of the muscular tightness and set his thoughts in order.

Level yellow light came through eucalyptus groves to splash on a cropped greensward and pompous white buildings, almost bare of mankind in this pause between baccalaureate ceremonies and summer classes. Kintyre reflected vaguely that he would have to go through Bruce's desk, finish his work, yes, and complete his study of the Book of Witches.... His mind drifted off toward a worried practical consideration. What could he do about Margery?

He wanted to help her, if he could—double damnation, hadn't he tried before? At the same time he was not, repeat not, going to get himself involved. It would be unfair to both of them.

There were rules of the game, and so he had played it with her. You left wives and virgins alone: well, she was long divorced, and had slept around a bit since then. You neither gave to nor took from a woman. You made it perfectly clear you weren't interested in anything permanent. And when you broke it off, after a pleasant few months, you did it cleanly: he had the best excuse in the world, back in 1955, an academic grant that returned him to Italy for a year of research in his specialty, the Renaissance. (But she had been very quiet, the last few weeks; sometimes at night he had heard her trying not to cry.) Back home again, you didn't resume old affairs: you were simply friendly, on such occasions as you happened to meet.

Yes, of course. Only then she took up with Bruce, and Bruce had wanted to marry her, and she had plainly been considering it, and now Brace was dead and Kintyre was on his way to console her. Could you walk in her door and say: "Hello, I still subscribe to the why-buy-a-cow philosophy so be careful, now you may weep on my shoulder"?

He realized he was sucking on a dead cigarette. He threw it away and stopped to light another. He was almost under the building which housed his own department.

"Good evening."

Kintyre looked up. Jabez Owens was walking toward him.

"Hello," he answered. "How are you? Excuse me, but I've got to—"

Owens reached him and took his hand. "My dear old chap," he said in his most Harvard accent, "I'm awfully sorry."

"Hm?"

"Young Lombardi. I saw it in the papers. You know?"

"Yes." Kintyre looked coldly at Owens. The writer was a tall man, the breadth of his shoulders attributable only in part to his tailor. He had straight ruddy features, dark wavy hair graying at the temples, blue eyes behind wrought-iron glasses, tweedy clothes with a scarf filling the V of the jacket, and a small calabash pipe in one pocket.

"I know he was murdered," said Kintyre, watching the other's face.

"Terrible. I remember once in Sumatra—but that was long ago. See here," said Owens candidly, "I know you know of my disagreements with the poor young fellow. Why, it was only—when? Thursday night we were at that party at Clayton's. You must have heard us quarreling over his silly thesis. But this! De mortuis nil nisi bonum."

Kintyre did not like Owens. It was not so much the scholar raising his hackles at a rather lurid popularizer. What the devil, Owens' books stirred up some public interest; they passed on some information, however distorted; and that was more than you could say for the average historiographic monograph. But during the whole week he had been in Berkeley, one long theatrical performance had gone on, with Jabez Owens the plot, dialogue, director, producer, star, supporting cast, and claque. It grew monotonous.

Wherefore Kintyre said maliciously: "I'll be completing that thesis for him. Doubtless I too will be forced to include a side glance at those Borgia letters of yours. But it'll take me a while, I don't have all the facts and deductions at my fingertips as he did. So I suggest you hurry to Hollywood and get that movie started."

Owens laughed a well gauged laugh, neither too loud for this posthumous argument nor too small to sound genuine. "I'd love to take you on," he said. "Nothing I like better than a good verbal fight, and that's what the boy was giving me. As a matter of fact, I may be staying here a few more days. Or maybe not. But what I really stopped you for was to offer my sympathy and ask if I could help."

"What with?" asked Kintyre. It stuck him as a bit of a coincidence that Owens had happened to be passing by this special building at this moment.

"Oh, I don't know. Nothing, I suppose. You seem headed toward his, ah—" Owens paused delicately—"his fiancée's place. I gathered from someone's remark, she lives in this area."

"Uh-huh."

"Charming girl. Poor Lombardi. She is so good a reason for not dying. Please give her my regrets. Ah—a moment more, if you will."

"Yes?" Kintyre was turning to go; he stopped.

Owens flushed. "Don't misunderstand me. It's none of my business, certainly. But I'd say at a guess I am a good fifteen years older than you, and perhaps—I suppose I needn't advise you. But I do want to help you. And her. See here, take her out tonight. I know they were living together. There'll be too many memories at her home." He nodded, almost awkwardly. "Pardon me. I have to go now. I'll be seeing you."

Kintyre stared after him. The deuce you say! I didn't think you had a genuine bone in your body.

He glanced at his watch. He was late. His steps lengthened, a hollow noise on the sunset pavement.

Past the elaborate south gate, down a few shop-lined blocks of Telegraph Avenue, then left, slightly uphill, along a street of rooming houses and small apartments. Margery's flat was here; or should you say it had been Bruce's? He had gotten his mail, discreetly, at another address (which must now be overrun with sight-seers)—but this was Theirs.

Kintyre went upstairs. Margery opened her door at his buzz and closed it again behind him.

Bruce had moved in with her during the Christmas holidays, half a year ago now, but the interior was still hers, airily modern. Starting on bluff and nerve and a jerkwater college's art degree, she had made herself important to a local firm of decorators. Bruce would have lived happily in a cave, if it had had book-shelves.

And yet somehow, thought Kintyre as he waited for Margery to speak—somehow, she had reshaped the place around him. The piano he played so well stood tuned for him; by now, most of the records were ones which he had shown her—quietly, even unconsciously—were good to have. She had matted and hung one of his inkbrush sketches, a view from Albany Hill toward the Golden Gate, whose contours brought you back for a second look.

And, of course, nearly all the books were his, and she had made an offside room into a study for him. When you added it up, maybe only the clothes and the parakeet were altogether her own.

I never affected her like this, thought Kintyre. Margery's apartments always felt nervous before. Somehow Bruce made this one peaceful.

"Hello," he said, for she was evidently not going to speak first.

"Hi." She went over to a glass-topped coffee table and opened a cigarette box. "Thanks for coming."

"No thanks needed," he said. "Could be you'll help me more than I will you."

She looked at him for a moment, and he realized it had been a tactless answer with too many unwanted implications. But then she picked up a cigarette and flicked a lighter to it. "Drink?" she asked.

"Well—you drink too much, pony."

"Perhaps you don't drink enough," she said.

"I like the taste. I